Kamala Films and producer Guy Stodel are partnering on an English-language remake of the Spanish heist thriller 25 Kilates.

Eric Garcia, whose 2003 book Matchstick Men was made into a film starring Nicolas Cage and Sam Rockwell and directed by Ridley Scott, will adapt the film, whose new title will be 25 Carat.

Written and directed by Patxi Amezcua, 25 Kilates was released in 2009 and revolved around a petty thief and a mob enforcer who hatch a daring plan to break free from the criminal underworld in Barcelona, Spain. The film is also a love story following two desperate people who are forced to trust one another.

Stodel is producing alongside Kamala Films founder Marissa McMahon. The pair have begun the search for a director.

Imagina Sales International, a TV and film rights distribution platform that is a division of Grupo Imagina, brokered the original to Kamala and Stodel.

Stodel is a former New Line exec and Paramount Vantage head whose producing credits include the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the 13th and Michel Gondry's Be Kind Rewind starring Jack Black. Stodel most recently set up Secret, a Korean thriller at New Line. He is also producing Le Mac, based on the French-language film (Ed Helms will star).

Kamala Films is a New York-based production company whose slate includes such books Adam Gidwitz's A Tale Dark & Grimm, to be directed by Henry Selick; Jeff Guinn's Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, to be directed by Michael Sucsy; and the as-yet-titled biopic of slain war journalist Marie Colvin written by Arash Amel and produced with Thunder Road and Charlize Theron's Denver and Delilah Films. In 2011, Kamala acquired the film rights to influential 1970s Japanese manga Lone Wolf and Cub, attaching Justin Lin and screenwriters David and Janet Peoples to the live-action adaptation.

Garcia's credits also include co-adapting the screenplay from his book The Repossession Mambo into 2010's Repo Men starring Jude Law and Forest Whitaker. His acclaimed Rex trilogy was turned into a TV movie in 2004. Recently, he wrote an adaptation of John Searles' thriller novel Strange but True, to be directed by the Pastor brothers later this year.

He is repped by WME, Intellectual Property Group and attorney Patti Felker.